Calibration of low-cost triaxial inertial sensors

Accelerometers (ACCs) and gyroscopes (gyros) are commonly known as inertial sensors and their orthogonal triads generally form an inertial measurement unit (IMU) used as a core means of a navigation system. Before the navigation system is to be used, it is necessary to perform its calibration. A typical process of the IMU calibration usually estimates scale-factors, orthogonality or misalignment errors, and offsets of both triads. These parameters compose the so-called sensor error model (SEM). The process of obtaining accurate information that describes the motion performed within the calibration generally requires a costly and specialized means [1], [2]. Therefore, much effort has been put into cost-effective calibration using an optical motion tracking system [3]–[6], or transferring the calibration into a state estimation problem [7]. In the ACC case, most of the current calibration methods utilize the fact that ACCs are affected by gravity when they are under static conditions. Therefore, we proceed with calibration performed under static conditions, which utilizes the knowledge of the gravity magnitude and ACC output measurements collected at predetermined orientations and performs ACC SEM estimation using nonlinear optimization [6], [8]–[10]. In the gyro case, calibration based on the Earth's rate might be inapplicable, for instance due to the fact that Earth's rate is under or around the resolution of the gyro, and thus other means to apply and measure angular rates need to be used. This situation commonly arises in the case of low-cost MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical System) based gyros. Thus, expensive mechanical platforms are often inevitable [11]–[14].